03/26/11 Aprons & bonnets & rock band

3/26/11

Hey!  How's it going?!

I heard from your mission mama that your comp got transferred and that she loves you and stuff.  She didn't really say a ton but it was a nice quick message from her!  She said I'd have to get all the details from you...so...details?!

What's your comp's name?  How are you meshing so far?  Where is your comp from?  How long has he been out?  So is it wierd losing Elder Weaver?  Where did he end up?  Do you think you guys will stay friends?

Things have stayed super busy around here.  Somehow keep getting done all that needs done though.

In YW we are working on making aprons and bonnets.  Nine girls came out on Wednesday night!!!  Can you believe it?  I think we finally found something they really like.  It'll probably take at least 2 more Tuesday's to finish up.  (Maybe some of them will work on these at home, I'm not sure.)  Everyone went to Amanda Turner's house and we had about 6 sewing machines set up and cutting boards etc.  It was a MAJOR operation.  I didn't realize it was going to take so long.  I was kinda bummed how little progress we seemed to make.  Oh well.  They loved it and hopefully they'll come back again and again to do some more!

The girls are keeping busy with all their activities.  We're just about to the end of the girl scout cookies.  Rachel said there is 12 mints, 12 lemon creams and 3 trefoils left to sell.  That' pretty good from 15 dozen last week!

Our soccer games got rained out today (yeah!!!) so I got in a nap.  This overcast weather makes me sleepy!

Afterward the guys played rock band and the girls went out shopping.  We did a little nail party and made the girls nails...kinda ugly!  They loved it though.  Dad bbq'd for Dallas birthday dinner (a day early) -- we are having a birthday weekend.  We had chicken and snake.  With beans and rice and rolls.  Yummy, of course.  Right now a peanut butter chocolate chip & m&m cheesecake is baking.  Should be done...soon.  Mmmmmm....

Can you get cream cheese and m&m's and stuff there? Do they have regular candy bars?  

The YW broadcast is tonight - going on right now - but I decided I wanted to stay in my sweat pants and not done hair and watch the 8 p.m. TV version.  I figure only 2 girls will probaby be there with their mothers anyway so hopefully noone misses me!

Are you exercising in the a.m. or do you just walk alot?  I was reading about missionary schedules and hadn't really heard you talk about doing anything -- just wondered.

Did you get any shoes? Are you thinking we need to send some for you?  

How is transportation getting to the mission home?  Do you take a bus or a jeepnee or what?  Does it take a long time?  Did you get some yummy food this time there?  Are you getting to know the pres and his wife very well?

Well keep working hard and loving what you are doing...makes time go faster! Serving others makes you forget yourself so if you are feeling down find someone to serve.

Love you lots and wish only the best for you.  love mom.

03/20/11 Spring Break!

3/20/11

Hi AJ!

The kids had spring break this week and so have been toodeling around the house looking for stuff to do. The girls went and stayed at Grandma and pa's house this week for a night.  I think they really enjoyed it.  They got to go to the happy factory where dad makes toys every week and the each got a little wooden car.  Grandma took them to the dollar store and they got "stuff".  A water bottle is the only thing I can remember and they've been carrying that around all the time.

The girls have been selling girl scout cookies...wanna buy some girl scout cookies!?!  Ha ha.  I don't even know how many thousands of dollars worth they've sold so far.  I think Rachel said our troop owes about $10,000 for the cookies we pre-sold and are currently working on selling.  Wow, that's a lot of cookies.  Our troop will end up with about $1200 if we sell all we have.  What we don't sell eats into our profits considerably (I think the troop only gets about $.40 per box so $3.10 we have to pay for each one we don't sell...or something crazy like that).

I bought a new sewing machine yesterday and made the girls cute little aprons (experimental project).  I'll send you a picture.  It is so nice to sew when it actually works.  Hopefully I won't kill my machine off too quickly.  I keep trying to make the one my mom gave me years ago work (it is an expensive nice model) but it just makes me want to say bad words...So I may have to just wash my hands of it and walk away...

We played ultimate frisbee last week for combind activity and had about 6 girls.  It is spring break week so some people were out of town.  Others just blew us off, like usual.  Oh well.  They are missing out.

My friend told me about a game where you put flour in socks and everyone wears black and you throw the socks at people.  I'm not sure of the details but it sounds pretty fun.

We are going to New Harmony today to have sandwiches with Ben and Laura and their gang coming too.  Hopefully it'll be fun.  Jared and family lives in town so it's likely to be pretty crowded.

My boss approached me and asked me to be the assistant treasurer for the city.  It's just some extra duties (not even sure there is any extra pay with it at this point).  They are working out some details and will let me know if it goes through.  Basically I'll have to sign checks and do deposits when the treasurer is gone and 1 week a year they will require the treasurer to take vacation and that week I'll work from his office and Kathy will do my job in my office.   It should be good...I was always curious about that job but never wanted to "do" it and give up my court in case I didn't like it.  Now if I like it and the treasurer ever leaves I'll know better if that's a direction I want to take.  If not, no biggie, right?

Well it's time to run the boys to church and head out the door ourselves shortly after that.

There is a lot of unrest in the world and it is sort of unsettling to think about but I know that things will be ok for us if we continue to try to do what's right.  Thank you for your example to our family and your service to the Lord.  You are molding yourself into a person that will be able to handle this crazy world we live in!  You are a good son and I love you!  I'm sending you a big hug and messing your hair right now.  I love you!!!!  Take care of yourself.  Love mom.

03/13/11 Girl Scout Cookies & value sandwiches

3/13/11

Another busy week behind us!

The girls and I have been busy selling girl scout cookies.  We sold about 240 boxes (about $850) worth this past weekend.  The girls have been dancing with signs in the hands on Telegraph bringing customers in.  The also went through the soccer fields during games and shouted "girl scout cookies!".   Lucky for us the weather was beautiful.  We are sick of selling cookies though!  Unlucky for us...there is still lots more left.  I think the troop will sell the rest (I hope to be done with booths!)

This week for YW we had new beginnings.  Sister Caldwell put together a cute program where you make a "Value Sandwich".  Every one came to the Heavenly Deli (or something like that).   She assigned a value to each ingredient and our hostess talked about it as we added the item to the sandwich.  Like a cooking show.  There were commercials (little videos by Pres Monson), short talk by Amanda Turner and Brother Baker.  The girls really loved it and it was dang cute.  We had 4 members and 4 non-members.  We were missing our usual 4 members and that's too bad but all it all it was pretty great.

We are getting ready for girls camp and youth conference.  My camp director requested released last week (Sis. Crawford thinks they will move the first week of June) so I had Sister Sharp called in.  She is SO excited!  She will be awesome.  I put in for an assistant and we should have some really neat sisters working on a pretty special program for girls camp.  For youth conference we are planning a pioneer trek and we are working on make aprons and matching bonnets for each of the girls.  We'll start that in 2 weeks.  They are really cute.  I think the girls will like having them.  I have some talented ladies that agreed to bring sewing machines and help teach us how to do it.

Work has been busier than ever.  I swear someone lit a fire under the police department because they are giving out TONS of tickets.  It's crazy.  I ask if they have new quotas and they deny it but I'll tell you what...I'd be careful driving around here!  They are BUSY handing tickets to all.

Dad found a book that talks about the ten A's of a successful life.  Things like attitude...k, can't remember the other A's.  But we are going to read those each night for the next week and talk about them with the kids.  They are really cool.  The first one talked about was appreciation...giving thanks for things big and small and being thankful for what you have.  Writing notes. Saying thank you.  Etc.  I think it will be a good little exercise for the kids.  I want to take all 10 words and print them up and post them somewhere...just not sure how or where yet.

Dallas and Bryce went to Sonic and applied for a job yesterday.  They said all the people working there were white.  Wierd, huh?!

Dallas didn't pass the swimming portion of the lifeguard pretest so he isn't going to take the class right now.  Maybe it's best.  He will have to practice quite a bit should he choose to do that.  Dave said he'd hire him but didn't promise many hours.  Said he's been cut back and doesn't have many to give.  So we'll see.  We told Dallas before he could get his license he had to have first months payment and some other stuff.  We are shooting for him getting his DL about the time Bryce gets his permit.  They are growing up!

Oh yea, so with the Tsunami warnings and all were you affected?  We weren't sure if the river by your house would cause you to get "moved" or not.  The mission mama posted that some were relocated for a day but everything was back to normal so we assume you are all good.  Tell us about it!

K, love you lots and so thankful for your good example and hard work.  You're a hard act to follow but it's good...give the boys something high to shoot for!

Love you!!! Mom.

03/06/11 State playoffs & busted

3/6/11

Man the week flew by!  I can't believe it's Sunday again.  This week was fast but not necessarily all good.

Things are busy at work and phones seem to be non stop all the time these days.  Add to that the credit card machine not working...all week...and it made for a lot of explaining!  And next week should be worse because all our work had to pile up --- couldn't do month end reports (since we couldn't access the payments), couldn't issue late letters and warrants, etc.  Frustrating!

Dad went up to the State playoffs and the teams lost and he had to come right back.  The games were early in the a.m. and late in the p.m. so he was gone Monday afternoon (got to go to the Jazz though!!!), Tuesday and 1/2 day Wednesday.

Dallas got busted at school again and I had to go talk to the v.p. w/o dad because it was Wednesday morning.  So we are battling that again.  On the bright side v.p. said no contact at all anywhere with sharee until after Dallas graduates h.s. or he is busted.  She was removed from the class they had together and I'm hopeful the no contact will help them both find something better to do!  If you have any great words of wisdom for your brother you could share!

We did a scavenger hunt Wednesday night for YW.  The girls were given a list of 40 items that they had to find in Walmart and then take their picture with.  The broke up into 2 teams and had 30 minutes.  It was pretty fun.  Once we were done we went to the photo shop and pulled them up on the screen and gave them points for what they found.  The team with the most points got a bag of goodies with a rabbit toy in it.  The slow team got similar goodies with a turtle in it.  Cute.  Fun.  We had 6 girls out.  

We cleaned the church yesterday morning.  Heard stories about how it takes hours to do.  But we had Stevens and Jewkes and us and it was only about 1 hour.  I think we did a pretty good job too.  

The girls started soccer this week and Katie made the first goal of the year for her team!!!  They won 6-0.  Holly played goalie and no scores were made while she goalied.  After she was done a goal was made and the game ended tied.  After a kick off her team lost.  But it was close and fun.

Girl scout cookies are here and during the games we filled a wagon and walked around the park selling cookies.  Sold about $250 worth during the two games total.  Not bad, huh?  (About 70 boxes) Of course there are like $3000 worth that the troop ordered extra to sell so that is just a drop in the bucket.  But there are 8 other girls in the troop so hopefully they'll all participate and the cookies will be gone before long.

Uncle Ben and Aunt Laura took us out to Red Robin last night for dad's birthday.  It was delicious.  of course.  They seemed to be really happy and content.  They said for once all their kids seem to be doing really well.  I think all the boys may be enrolled in college.  Jared and Brit live close by and visit often (but not TOO often, ya know?!).  They said Nick and Bree have started coming to family night and attending church. They are really hopeful they've turned the teenage corner and adulthood will be easier!!!  They still have missionaries living at the house with them too.

So how are things in the Phillipines?  Have you had good success with teaching this week?  Did you finally get you some new shoes?  (I noticed you took out some $ so I was hopeful you had!!!)

I've been getting some of the notes from the sister missionaries and it sounds like they are really struggling with food there. Are you not supposed to eat the veggies like the health dept lady said? (not that it would bother you if you couldn't!!!)  Have you had problems with bugs biting.  That seems to be another issue.  Are you still using the toxic bug killer you took with you on your clothes and sheets?  Does it help?  Or are since you  are in town and so that's not as much of an issue?  

Grandma had to flu this week so if you write her tell her to feel better!  We aren't going to New Harmony today in hopes of NOT catching it!!!  She said her sides ached from heaving so much.  Poor thing!  

You haven't really mentioned any sickness yet on your part...so are you doing just fine with the foods and they haven't gotten you sick or are you just not sharing with us that you've been sick?  I'm kind of thinking of you as IRON GUT AJ!  

Well it's about time to get on to church and I'm not ready so I'd better sign off.  

I love you lots and am so proud of your accomplishments and hard work and dilligence.  You have no idea how happy it makes me that you are choosing the right and learning and growing.  Keep up the good work and of course let us know if there is anything we can do to help you!!!

Love, mom.